And there was never a set list or a ticket charge. Or a ticket, for that matter.

See, musical Nashville is special, in large part because so many world-class musicians live within an easy drive of each other. And musicians are special.

They like what they do for a living, to the point that they’ll do it for pleasure. Plumbers don’t gather on Sundays to plumb for fun. Accountants don’t have number-crunching parties. But in Nashville, for many years, musicians gathered at the Belmont Boulevard home of famed producer Cowboy Jack Clement and at the Franklin Pike home of bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs and his wife, Louise, to laugh and smile and eat and play music.

These gatherings were joyful and casual, which is a good thing: Had they carried a whiff of formality, they would have been of terrifying weight. We’re talking about the greatest of the great, in unique conjunctions, playing together. Spouses, children and friends were invited, but the goal wasn’t to entertain the nonmusicians in attendance. There really wasn’t any goal at all. Just being together was mission accomplished.

The athletic equivalent might be the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” scrimmages, where Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley and other future Hall of Famers went up against each other away from television cameras. But even that was competition. These Nashville gatherings were fellowship, not gamesmanship.

As for a rock ’n’ roll equivalent, there’s probably not one.

There’s a good documentary called “Festival Express” about a train tour that featured The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band and others. But even there, performers were being paid to be on that train. Levon Helm’s “Midnight Ramble” shows at his Woodstock, N.Y., home were joyful confluences, but tickets were sold and the musicians were (rightly) interested in pleasing an audience.

Johnny and June Carter Cash used to host “guitar pulls” at their Hendersonville home, where Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, Joni Mitchell, George Hamilton IV, Gordon Lightfoot and many other writers came for music and hospitality.

John Hartford’s home on the banks of the Cumberland was home to epic New Year’s jams, and it may be that other groundbreaking musicians opened their homes for such sessions. (I’m told that musicians don’t always invite journalists to their big shindigs, though that’s difficult to believe.)

So what can we do about all this?

Well, I just got an email about someone’s rich uncle who died in Nigeria: Apparently, this guy needs my account information so that the uncle’s millions can be deposited in my name. If all that works out, I’m going to buy late Country Music Hall of Famer Cowboy Jack’s house — which has an upstairs recording studio built by the great Mark Howard — and revive it as a creative center, using Cowboy Jack’s motto as a mission statement: “We’re in the fun business. If we’re not having fun, we’re not doing our job.” All I need is a little more than $1.28 million.

You, dear reader, may purchase the Scruggs home, which in the past was also owned by the late fellow Country Music Hall of Famers — and former spouses — George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

Listed at $3.5 million, it is a gorgeous, rambling estate with room enough to invite dozens of musicians over to convene and collaborate. There’s a big iron gate out front, and I used to get giddy just watching from my driver’s seat when the thing opened: Driving through that gate was like passing through the turnstile on opening day of baseball season.

I’m counting hard on that rich Nigerian uncle money coming through, but if the real estate stuff doesn’t work out for us, maybe we can open our own homes.

Maybe we can visit each other in person, rather than just checking in through social media. Maybe bring-your-own-booze becomes bring-your-own-instrument (though it’s not an either/or: Instrument cases have lots of booze-hiding compartments).

Maybe we turn our houses into Nashville’s greatest music venues, just for the fun of it. Just because we can. Just because we’re Nashville, and our houses sound better than the houses in Wichita. We’re in the fun business, and it’s time to get to work.

The CMA will present Swift with its Pinnacle Award, given to an artist who has achieved worldwide success and recognition that is unique to country music.

Garth Brooks is the only other performer to win the award. It was created in 2005.

Swift is the top nominee at Wednesday’s awards, aired live at 8 p.m. EDT on ABC from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. She’s got six nominations along with Kacey Musgraves, and is going for a third win of top honor entertainer of the year.

Before the ceremony — which was the first event in the museum’s new CMA Theater — Clement’s daughter Alison Clement-Bolton teared up when she said, “He’s just my cowdaddy. (The induction) just means he’s extraordinary, like I always knew he was. … He didn’t want to be famous. He just wanted to have fun, and he did that.”

Cartoonist and children’s book author Sandra Boynton didn’t realize that making a country music album in Nashville would be “this hard.”

Boynton has recorded four other albums — three of which are gold — and illustrated books to accompany the recordings. They feature the same whimsical critter caricatures made famous in books such as “Moo, Baa, La La La!” and “Barnyard Dance.”

Having written more than 50 children’s books with more than 60 million copies sold, she thought that her track record would speak for itself and that she would have no problem persuading A-list singers to hop on her album. She was wrong.

But she persevered. “Frog Trouble and Eleven Other Pretty Serious Songs” will be in stores Sept. 3. The album, which Boynton hopes will be enjoyed by “ages 1 to older than dirt,” features artists including Brad Paisley, Dwight Yoakam, Alison Krauss, Josh Turner, Kacey Musgraves, Ryan Adams and Darius Rucker.

“I hope it doesn’t just get relegated to, ‘Oh, it’s a cute kids’ album, because I mean for it to be a good children’s album, but I actually mean for it to be for everyone,” says Boynton, a 60-year-old mother of four originally from Philadelphia. “People can think you’re delusional in a way, like you don’t know where your place is, but I think I’m right. I think it is potentially a broader appeal.”

The album contains 12 original songs written by the author and was recorded in Nashville over the last two years. Boynton says she heard Turner’s voice as she was writing “Alligator Stroll” and wanted to have a low voice singing the lyrics.

“Most people haven’t heard the sound an alligator makes, but it’s really low, it’s a lot lower than people can actually hear so it made sense when she contacted me,” Turner jokes. “Absolutely, I sound most like an alligator.”

While Boynton says she is “giddy” hearing Turner’s voice on her lyrics, she admits she was initially apprehensive about making a country album because her current hometown of Philadelphia isn’t known for being a “traditional country music area.”

“I was already a fan of Josh’s and Brad Paisley and I ended up asking the people I most loved,” she says. “It just seemed exactly the right place to go and it was even a righter place to go than I knew.”

The inaugural concert — headlined by Middle Tennessee stars Alison Krauss and Jerry Douglas — will serve as a fundraiser for the association as well as a preview for 2014, when the festival plans to expand to an all-day event for an audience of 5,000 to 7,000, with multiple venues within The Factory and an outdoor main stage.

The announcement comes as the nonprofit trade association, which also presents the annual Americana Music Festival and Conference in Nashville in September, prepares to move its headquarters from Nashville to Franklin next month. Executive Director Jed Hilly says the new festival — aimed at the concert-going public — complements Nashville’s annual industry-heavy event, and one that has a fitting home outside of Music City.

“This music that has evolved from American roots traditions is something that needs to be shared, and something that we need to be proud of,” he says. “Cross County Lines is about breaking borders, breaking boundaries and coming together as a larger community.”

In addition to music, the event also includes dinner and dancing. Songwriter Josh Kear, who has penned songs including “Before He Cheats” and “Need You Now,” will open the show.

“It is so much fun,” Krauss said in a statement. “We played [the Linden Waldorf benefit] last year, and my face hurt from smiling.”
Admission is $125 and includes admission to a buffet, square dancing and the concert. Doors open at 6 p.m. For more information visit LindenWaldorf.org.

Perhaps it’s easier to identify which Grammy categories don’t have Nashville connections than which ones do. We never take the easy way out. Here is our annual guide to noteworthy Grammy nominations with Music City connections.

Record of the Year

Three of the six top record candidates hail from Nashville, with The Black Keys’ roots rock, Kelly Clarkson’s throb-pop and Taylor Swift’s crossover smash competing against category favorites from Gotye, fun. and Frank Ocean. Music City is unlikely to come out with a win here, but the Nash-strength in a category traditionally dominated by New York and Los Angeles-based efforts is a telling indicator of our Tennessee capital’s successfully ecumenical approach to record-making.

Album of the Year

White and the Keys are at the forefront of a new century of Nashville rock resurgence that also includes Kings of Leon, Jeff the Brotherhood and others.

Song of the Year

“Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” by Kelly Clarkson.

Clarkson, who first entered the popular fray as an “American Idol” diva, has lately bought a place in Nashville and, with the encouragement of Reba McEntire and many more, is moving about freely between pop and country realms. It’s as if she doesn’t understand that the point of music-making is to do the same thing, over and over, all your life.

Click here to see a photo gallery from Wednesday's 'Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!' show. Here, Taylor Swift and LL Cool J perform a rap version of one of her songs during the Bridgestone Arena show on Wednesday night. (Photo: Sam Simpkins/The Tennessean)

But what about three of six all-genre nominations for Record of the Year? And a couple of all-genre Album of the Year nominations? And nods for Best New Artist, Best Pop Instrumental, Best Rock Song (two of those), Best rock Album (two of those, as well), Best Spoken Word Album and Best Song Written For Visual Media?